1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to snow sports such as snowboarding and alpine and cross country skiing.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Skiing has become an extremely popular sport throughout the mountainous regions of the world and lends great entertainment value to the participants. The sport is fraught with risk of injury. Those risks have been long recognized and have been addressed in many different ways, as by supplying safer skis, ski bindings and ski boots which afford support to the athlete and provide for release in the event of a fall or lose of control all in effort to minimize injury to the skier. Likewise, in snowboarding many improvements have been made to protect the lower extremities by providing for articulation of the boot mounts and release thereof.
In the meantime, little attention has been given to the injuries of the upper extremities during a high speed fall or loss of control.
Downhill skiers typically use long ski polls for support with handles at the top and baskets at the lower extremity to limit penetration into the snow of the pole tip. Some attention has been given to the injuries to the skiers hand and thumb from falls causing a forceful disengagement of the skiers hand from the pole and the safety strap attaching the hand to the pole.
Consequently, skiers, and particularly snowboarder's, have been left without meaningful protection against injury of the upper extremities during a fall when the skier's natural inclination is to reach his or her arm out toward the snow surface during the fall causing abrupt and violent contact with the snow thus resulting in the hand, wrist, elbow and often times shoulder injury from the sharp impact, frequently resulting in hospitalization and often times surgery.
It has been proposed to form a ski pole handle with a strut hand hold projecting laterally from the upper end thereof and turning downwardly to project parallel to the handle and form a narrow longitudinal runner. A device of this type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,862,765 to Goheen.
While providing some support for certain exhibition maneuvers wherein the skier is facing forwardly and might lean over and apply weight to the runner as it moves along the hard pack snow surface, such devices have not been generally accepted and have little utility should a skier or snowboarder take a fall impacting the snow in a disorganized manner, sometimes inverted or facing uphill, resulting in disengagement from the ski pole itself.